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The French Rethink Thin

By Tara Parker-Pope April 15, 2008 3:22 pmApril 15, 2008 3:22 pm

Is it possible to legislate against thinness?

Thin and beautiful? (Remy de la Mauviniere/Associated Press)

That’s what lawmakers in France are attempting to do. The French parliament’s lower house has approved a bill that would make it illegal for anyone — including fashion magazines, advertisers and Web sites — to publicly incite extreme thinness, The Associated Press reports.

The bill is the latest effort to address concerns surrounding the fashion industry’s use of ultra-thin models. In November 2006, 21-year-old Ana Carolina Reston, a top Brazilian model, died as a result of anorexia. At the time of her death she weighed only 88 pounds.

French politicians and fashion industry members signed a nonbinding charter last week on promoting healthier body images. And last year Spain banned ultra-thin models from catwalks.

But Conservative politician Valery Boyer, who introduced the proposed law, argued that efforts to promote “extreme thinness” should be punishable in court. One target is Web sites that promote anorexic behavior with such advice as eating little more than an apple a day.

Although it’s not clear how the fashion industry would be affected by the rule, Ms. Boyer says she believes the legislation would force changes in how fashion houses depict women. The law would give judges the power to imprison and fine offenders up to about $50,000 if found guilty of “inciting others to deprive themselves of food” to an “excessive” degree.

The legislation goes to the Senate in the coming weeks. To read today’s full Times story on the topic, click here.

Wow, a law against “inciting others to deprive themselves of food”. Now I’ve seen everything. How completely wacko! I guess this will require experts to analyze magazine covers to see how thin the model is and then call the fashion police.. JEEZ! Skinny models will wear prosthetic fat on their hips when they go out in public… And how about the parents that encourage their teenage daughters to becom models? Should we fine them if their girl gets skinnier than allowed? WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?

I think this is a bit over the line. They aren’t forcing anyone to do anything, so I don’t think it is the government’s business to get involved. If people are bothered by it, which it sounds like a lot are, the fashion industry would have to change on its own or lose money.

It is not the government’s job to regulate the body and life styles of people. It is the government’s job to allow people to choose for themselves and to provide people with unbiased information. If some people choose to starve themselves for an ideal then that is their own business. The pressure to change the fashion industry needs to come from the people and designers; laws are not the answer.

Call me spiteful but I love to see the industry made to jump. It may not have caused the problem alone, but it definitely contributes to it. Call this consumers/voters engaging in collective action through a legislative solution. Not what the US calls collective action but then you guys don’t believe your own rhetoric. An American wrote “government by the people for the people” but you don’t actually implement that.

This IS government for the people by the people (and since its democratically elected, of the people)… more power to it!

Even if it doesn’t work at all – the signalling message is good and that’s important. The US should live up to the Gettysburg Address and follow the French and Spanish.

Not sure how to feel about this. It’s true that the nudge to change should come from designers and and the fashion industry (and on a larger scale general society), but will the fashion indistry change if it is not forced to? Although these laws are crossing a line, they are helping to save lives. I guess we have to think about what is more important: the lives of impressionable women (and the models who try to become that thin) or the rights of the models and designers.

I’m surprised at the overwhelmingly negative reaction in posts. Did you look at that picture? Keep in mind that Europeans have a tendency to regulate more than Americans do, that the obsession with liberty at all costs (note the handgun deaths in the US) is a peculiarly American phenomenon. So they want to legislate against the promotion of anorexia. Big deal. Extreme unhealthiness has for some reason become fashionable and maybe the government is needed to promote a little reason. And, as we’ve seen in this country, industry does NOT do a good job of “self-policing” (better read, Bush administration attempt to subvert all regulation).

Ray #3 isn’t it the government’s job to implement what the people want? If a majority vote for a government that does this then where exactly is the problem? It isn’t taking away life, liberty or property without due process unless you think that property and liberty entail allowing anyone to profit in any way whatsoever with no limits for public welfare (and any incursion to be taking that).

As for not forcing, how coercive does something have to be before it is unreasonable? As I understand it your country thinks that asking a woman to read a factual brochure or watch a factual video on the procedure of abortion (what some countries might consider vital to informed consent) as infrnging her right to an abortion because it manipulates her decision and creates a “barrier” to free choice.

So how about looking at the pervasive use of HFCS or other unhealthy ingredients in food – where there are either no alternatives or none at a comparable price – as coercing obesity by denying a genuine choice?

How about looking at the fact that size 14 (the size of the average australian woman and I’m guessin the US isn’t that different) is consdered “plus size” and is less available in mainsttream shops? THAT constrains free choice.

How about the fact that you have so few holidays and then further coercion by employer norms not to take those – as contributing to the obesity problem – that’s constraining free choice.

And if the mainstream sources of fashion media ALL show ONLY unhealthily thin images – does that not constrain free choice to say “oh no actually size 10 is pretty thin really”?

You could go for the middle ground and require that size 0 models only be used in the proportion they exist in the community. I think you’d find that had the same effect.

Of course you could say that liberty and property rights demand that you don’t regulate the images used.

But that would make the US a lawless profiteering nation rationalizing in the name of liberty and property and I don’t believe you’re capable of that abuse.

The problem is that people aren’t allowed to choose for themselves. Fashion magazines is one of the top sources people, especially young adults, look to when deciding what’s hot, what’s beautiful, and what’s in. But I do admit that it sounds a bit ridiculous. What’s gonna come next … the government putting restrictions on how many times per week you can eat at McDonald’s?

Just as we have the surgeon general in this country that regulates advertising the purpose of which is to incite “harmful behavior” (smoking and drinking), the French have their civil-law code that eschews most common law and goes straight into the Senate for pretty much everything, including regulation of harmful advertising. This is perfectly reasonable–their country has code that entitles everyone to the “right to respect for his body.” This right is enumerated directly after the first right to enjoyment of civil rights. Just as our Constitutional rights are protected by legislation and the courts, so too are French individual rights being protected here.

Anorexia is a serious public health issue, and while the US mainly has the opposite problem, other countries are doing the right thing by restricting the kind of damage advertising can do, especially in an area of commerce that depends so heavily on advertising (fashion) and directed towards those most heavily influenced by it (young women and men). Whether the charges should be criminal and not civil, that is debatable. But legislative action against unbridled commercial interests that profit from suggesting destructive behavior is acceptable, even by America’s free market standards.

Mostly in response to Ray, poster #3: If not laws, then what will change the behavior of the fashion industry? There is always the free speech/free artistic expression argument, but that could only be reasonably employed in the defense of fashion sketches, works of art or small-sized clothing in and of itself (not the human body). I think there is obviously a solid argument demonstrating that fashion designers and modeling companies perpetuate and enforce the unhealthily thin body type.
The culture is not separate from the people; rather, people create their own culture. By making “efforts to promote ‘extreme thinness'” illegal, such efforts will drop out of the social sphere to at least a small extent; extreme thinness will have to be replaced by, at least, slightly less extreme thinness, which is at least a step in the right direction. As a democratic government is by nature instituted by the people and composed of the people, this passing of this law is indeed representative of the acts of the people. This IS the pressure to change the fashion industry and is a suitable application of the law for the benefit of society.

i couldn’t help but notice that so far, all the people criticizing this proposed law are men and thus unaffected by it either way. women are the ones concerned here & as one of same, i think this law is a great idea. girls & women are killing themselves to measure up to impossible images; this law may save some lives.

I really don’t see anything happening with this. First they’d have to define “extreme thinness”. And what exactly would does it mean to “incite” this beauty standard? Seems like a total waste of time and energy, even if their motives ARE good.

The French government, like many other governments is yet passing another law that is not enforceable…that sounds good on paper but cannot be implemented. I think all governments pass more laws than I pass gas. Only effective laws are those that are enforced. I think that is what the U.S. gov. is learning the hard way now that a good chunk of its population are illegal immigrants.

Though it does feel odd to Americans that the government would have grounds to regulate something like body weight, I have to applaud the French government for wanting to promote a healthy lifestyle and body image to its people. I think that some of my fellow commentators are forgetting that laws, though they affect change in society, also reflect changing attitudes within. We also need to remember that these measures would not fine the people who are underweight, but the magazines, designers, etc. who are using them in their ads and catwalks. I think that it is a sign of a step forward in the fight against an unrealistic and unattainable body ideal that fashion industry members in France, one of the leading fashion capitals of the world, signed a charter promoting healthy body images, regardless of the future of the proposed law.

It would be better for the fashion industry to stop designing, encouraging and hiring such young and thin models.

Anyone ever watch America’s Next Top Model when you are considered old at 23? Not to mention, gasp! being a size six. How did you get so old and fat! They profess change and yet each judge commented on a 23 year old looking so old.

Au contraire mes amis. I think it’s a great idea. After all Paris is the fashion capital of the world. Parisians care more about how they look than any demographic in the world. If the French can be convinced that thin is “out” and that healthy is “in” the world will be that much better.
Left wing, liberal East Village artist.

The world needs to appreciate a woman’s body for all its suppleness and natural curves that they are born with, not bony sticks that look like a hanger in a closet. Once we do that, women will be free to enjoy their own beauty in all its fluidity and fleshiness not its skeletal portrayal.